Thread: Entrants' deaths soar in spite of U.S. efforts

http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/border/84767.php

Published: 07.19.2005

Entrants' deaths soar in spite of U.S. efforts
By Michael Marizco
ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Comparison of apprehensions, fatalities

YEAR DEATHS APPREHENSIONS Deaths per 100,000 apps

1998 11 387,406 2.8

1999 29 470,449 6.2

2000 74 616,346 12

2001 78 444,834 17.1

2002 134 328,043 40.5

2003 139 340,927 40.1

2004 141 482,145 28.6

2005 144 366,282 39.3**

**Through July 17, using the agency's tally of deaths.


Illegal entrants crossing through the Tucson Sector this fiscal year are dying at a rate 14 times greater than they did seven years ago - when the U.S. Border Patrol started its concerted effort to save them.

In 1998, the agency began the Border Safety Initiative, asking Mexican and Central American nationals not to cross the desert and putting in place its rescue teams in remote areas. At the end of the program's first year, the agency tallied 11 people dead in its Tucson Sector, about three for every 100,000 apprehensions made.

Apprehension numbers this fiscal year are at about the same level as in 1998, but the number of dead has soared to nearly 40 for every 100,000 apprehensions in the Tucson Sector, which covers most of Arizona except for an area around Yuma.

Critics say the agency undercuts its own efforts by targeting urban areas even as it sends rescue teams into the more remote, deadly desert.

With just over two months remaining in the fiscal year, the number of apprehensions - 366,282 - is virtually the same as in 1998, when there were 387,486 apprehensions by the end of the fiscal year. But the deaths of migrants are now occurring west of Tucson and Nogales, primarily on the Tohono O'odham Indian Nation, medical examiner reports show.

The Border Patrol tried to curb deaths, and crossings in general, with radio, newspaper and television ads. But the death count this year already surpasses last year. An Arizona Daily Star compilation of medical examiner records show that at least 170 illegal entrants have died in Southern Arizona since the start of the federal fiscal year Oct. 1. The Border Patrol's Tucson Sector counts 144 locally through Sunday but does not track every death.

The death count includes only the number of bodies found, but hundreds more are reported missing each year, said Jorge Solchaga of the Mexican consul-general's office in Phoenix, which collects 600 reports a year. Twenty percent of cases are never solved, he said. The situation is about the same in every other Arizona consulate, he said.

The most recent dead include 10 bodies found since Friday, one of them a 13-year-old boy.

Even the Border Patrol's national headquarters acknowledges the sharp spike in deaths this summer.

"The strong probability exists for a record number of migrant deaths," the agency wrote in a statement Monday about the heat wave plaguing Arizona.

The Border Patrol spent $700,000 in ad campaigns last year, urging people not to come illegally, said national spokesman Mario Villarreal. This year, $1.6 million was used to purchase airtime in Mexico, he said.

But the Border Patrol does not know if the campaign is working, he said.

"Nobody in Mexico understands these commercials," said Guillermo Alonso Meneses, a professor with the Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Tijuana who studies illegal migration into the United States. "They should use a telenovela (a television soap opera) to get the message out. As it is, people face a higher risk than they ever did before."

As part of the Border Safety Initiative, the agency created rescue teams - BORSTAR, for Border Patrol Search, Trauma and Rescue. Villarreal did not have costs for the teams or the equipment they use in the field.

"What would be happening if BSI (Border Safety Initiative) wasn't there?" Villarreal said of the 7-year-old program. "I know for a fact we have rescued over 1,800 people."

Some wonder where Mexico's responsibility lies in the deaths. That government has said nothing about the past two months of death in the Arizona desert, noted Glenn Spencer, president of the border activist group, American Border Patrol.

"Where is their responsibility in this?" he asked. Mexico's silence only fuels his belief that the country is trying to take over U.S. land, he said.

"These Mexicans are dying for the same reasons - to conquer territory," he said.

Deaths would be even higher without the ad campaigns, said the Migration Policy Institute's Doris Meissner, who headed the Immigration and Naturalization Service under the Clinton administration, when the Border Safety Initiative began.

"The problem is the broader failure of policy, not the Border Safety Initiative," she said.

"At the same time they are redoubling the safety initiative, they're also intensifying the strategy of pushing the undocumented traffic into ever more remote places where the possibility of being rescued decreases all the time," said Claudia Smith, director of the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation in California. "That's not deterring anybody."

It didn't deter Maria Rod- riguez, an illegal entrant who lives in the darkness of a brown brick apartment in Glendale.

The 60-year-old woman's son, Tomas Romero, went back to Mexico City for her and other family members two years ago, leading the family into the U.S. through Sonoyta, Sonora, then Lukeville in the middle of August. The group barely survived half a day.

The woman staggered in the desert; the black spots in front of her eyes wouldn't go away and she felt as if she'd stopped breathing. The smugglers walked away, saying they'd be back. Then Romero, 36, left to search for water as Rodriguez's grandson and nephew propped her up.

The family carried her to Arizona 85 to surrender to the Border Patrol. They didn't tell agents Romero was still in the desert.

Two years later, he is still missing. His mother prays daily to a small altar.

The family cannot search the desert themselves. The entire group lives in the United States illegally and fears the immigration agents who, paradoxically, can help them locate him, or find his body.

"Whether he is dead or he is alive," his mother sobs, rocking back and forth in her chair, her eyes squeezed shut. "I want my son."

The death count includes only the number of bodies found, but hundreds more are reported missing each year, said Jorge Solchaga of the Mexican consul-general's office in Phoenix, which collects 600 reports a year.

They why doesn't Mexico encourage its citizens to refrain from entering the US illegally? It is not very smart to cross the desert in summer.

I am appalled at all of theses deaths. The US needs to help stop this immediately, Mexico can help as well. All they have to do is guard our borders and seal unsecured areas. Let’s keep these poor souls out of the desert heat. they can stay home and find a shady spot instead and remain with their families.

Let’s keep these poor souls out of the desert heat. they can stay home and find a shady spot instead and remain with their families.

Yet Fox does NOTHING to discourage "his" people from taking thi$ ri$k...even in July!!